Boiler repair and Detailing
The Akane models were made in the early 1960’s and their detailing is sparse by today’s standards. A lot of turnings were used in place of the more detailed brass castings. All of the original handrails on the model were oversized.
After bead blasting to clean up the model I first repaired all the broken solder joints. Over the years the model had been repaired several times, some repairs were made with solder, and some were made with epoxy. Needless to say some of the repair work was less than spectacular, and numerous bad joints had to be fixed, and the excess solder blobs had to be removed.
I removed all the brass turnings and replaced them with castings. All of the oversized hand rails were removed and replaced with 20 mil brass wire. Rather than a long dissertation on all the things I changed I’ll highlight the changes in a set of pictures. The red arrows in the following pictures show all the items that were changed or added.
Click picture for a larger version
Click picture for a larger version
Click picture for a larger version
Click picture for a larger version
Just a little bit of work…
Page 6 - Last updated April 19, 2004